A First Time and a Last
by Pickwick12
Summary: A brief look at the relationship between the Doctor and River Song. Spoilers through the Season 7 finale.
1. A First Time for Everything

There's a first time for everything.

"Maybe when you're older," she said last time, when he mentioned kissing her. He didn't really mean it then, but it's different now. He knows this woman, even though he has no idea who she is.

She's saved his life. He's saved hers. It's all too much to keep track of, and it doesn't really matter. He's always known, from the moment she whispered in his ear in the Library, that she's the one.

Now he's finally ready. He's gone through wool and leather and pinstripes, a war and the end of the universe. His face is the greatest of ironies—almost childlike. But maybe the universe wasn't wrong to give it to him. Something in him feels young, younger than ever before. Younger even than he did as a child when he stood in front of the Time Vortex and stared into the fabric of reality. He felt old, then, before his time. Old with the weight of a million worlds.

He didn't know then that healing lay in the eyes of so many, a blond with irrepressible hope, a doctor with the courage of a lion, a writer with loyalty like iron, a little girl with a stubborn accent and the reddest hair he'd ever seen. He didn't know that a day would come when he wouldn't feel old any more.

That day is today. He can't turn away when River Song asks for more. He knows what she means; he can see it, but he can't quite believe it. He was a husband worlds ago, a father lifetimes before, a grandfather in another age.

But this is different. This time he's come of age. He's finally young enough.

He sees River's intention in her eyes, and he doesn't run. He feels her hands pull him close, and as her lips press against his, he knows.

There's a first time for everything, and a first means many, many more.


	2. And a Last

And a last.

His eyes are so blank, she thinks he must be playing her, teasing her before he wraps her in his arms and gives her the kiss that can melt the toughest archaeologist in the universe. Nine hundred years is a long lifetime to kiss and be kissed, and he's made good use of it. The first time, she felt like she was drowning. He only smiled and winked, as if they'd done it a thousand times before. She didn't know then that they had.

She can handle him not knowing, keeping her off balance with the things she remembers that he doesn't know yet. Spoilers. It's all right because their relationship is more than that. She likes being a mystery, and he likes the guessing game. She doesn't mind being his future. She likes knowing that when she's gone, there will be more for him to experience, more happiness than he can imagine. It's all right that he gets younger as she gets older. She gets to teach him to love her, the older River making the Doctor ready for the young girl he'll one day meet. She can handle whatever this back-to-front relationship throws at her.

Until today.

It's no less enjoyable. She feels his lips, smells his scent, lets herself relish the closeness that will carry her through until she sees him again. But it's different. He's different. Uncertain and a little bit clumsy, like someone who remembers how to ride a bike but hasn't done it in ages.

She steps back and looks at him, and she realizes. Today is the last time. Today is the day she can't handle.


	3. Lasts

She knew too much, the first time he met her. But who's willing to die for you when they don't even know you? Friendship is a funny thing when one person knows more than the other, when the timelines aren't synched.

He's always wondered why it had to be a bowtie, why that was the thing that caught his eye in the hospital closet in Leadworth, like it had been placed there with a "Take me, Doctor" sign on it. He's always wondered. Until now.

He holds out one end to her, and she takes it. This is the last day he will wonder who he is to her, who she is to him. He will come for her the day before she dies, and they will watch the stars together. Will it be him, or will it be another him? It won't matter. She will know all his faces.

Now he knows why she died for him. After all, if you've halted time for someone, dying must not be such a big thing.

As he winds the cloth around his hand, he knows. The first moments of marriage are the last moments of an upside-down friendship. This is the kiss that will turn it all rightside-up.


	4. Are Firsts In Disguise

He holds the end of the cloth out to her. She's never heard of this tradition. Not that she would have. She may be part timelord, but she has little of a timelord's knowledge.

Not that she needs it. Even he couldn't have predicted that she'd do this, halt all time, not to save him, but to do something infinitely more important. More important to him, that is, and that's the reason.

She knows she can't stop it, but it's worth this; it's worth messing up history, so she can see him finally look at her—really look at her—and see that she knows him. Yes, she loves him, but this is more. This last gift is more than the knowledge that unnamed millions will mourn his passing. It's the knowledge that one person, a single living woman, knows what matters to him more than anything in the universe.

Time doesn't matter to her compared with the look on his face when he finally understands. And now she can face it. She can take the cloth and wind it around her hand. Funny that it's black. A wedding and a funeral.

Married. They will spend their last moments married.

"Look into my eye."

She looks, and suddenly she knows. Sometimes lasts are firsts in disguise.


	5. Flesh

Flesh

She has never realized before what it means to be made of earth. They're so heavy, her parents, with bodies that gravity pulls toward the ground as surely as the sun rises over the world each morning. No matter how often the madman pulls them out of time, for them it still passes in the same way. The weight of the world is their doom and their destiny.

But she is made of time, born to dance on the edge of the world. For her, flesh is just a garment, as it is for him. She watches her husband, realizing how little it has come to matter that they meet out of time. They are not weighed down, and their lives are ever in liquid flux. They are linked by the stars.


	6. And Stone

And Stone

Two names on a gravestone. Two lives etched into the surface of the world, making their mark on time, but finally its prisoner. Sometimes he's not sure his way is better, the way of the immortal nomad, ever leaving sandy footprints on the earth that time washes away like the tide. Human lives are like chisels, ever carving themselves into existence. He is too light. The vastness of his life means he has no chisel. All things pass away, and all is forgotten.

But there is a cliff face, somewhere, with an endearment carved upon it. A pair of eyes follow him through time, and he can no longer run away. She is her own kind of gravity, a force that exerts a pull on him that proves he isn't weightless. With each kiss, they etch their love into the unyielding surface of reality. Together, they are real.


	7. Goodbye

Goodbye

The original sin of a timelord is to let nothing end.

They have done Jim the Fish. They have seen the stars from the surfaces of a thousand planets. They have filled a blue book with adventures so wonderful they could overfill the belly of a vengeful god and make him explode with the beauty of them.

But humans are not the only ones who die, and they are not alone in their ability to sacrifice.

He has loved her for as long as a plastic centurion loved a red-headed princess. But everything ends, even the best things. He says goodbye.


	8. And Hello

Hello

It was fitting that a library was her tomb. Also fitting, she thought, that she would give her life for his, since she has already given him her regenerations. She doesn't mind.

He does not understand her sacrifice, that day, but she knows that he will—when she is gone, when he's traded his spectacles for a bowtie. Perhaps _gone _is an insufficient word. All of her regenerations live in him, and he lives on.

He told her, once, about a little maid on a flying ship who became stardust. River doesn't want to be stardust. She just wants to be a song—the one he sings when he greets the universe each morning. That's enough for her.

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><p><strong>AN: I've had a wonderful time writing these drabbles. Thanks so much for reading.**


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